Holiday 2012 Small Form Factor Buyer's Guide
by Zach Throckmorton on December 5, 2012 1:55 AM ESTConclusions
It never ceases to impress me how rapidly PC hardware advances. Compared to the SFF systems we recommended in 2011, today's small computers either cost less, are substantially more capable, or both. I am particularly pleased with the continued innovation in the ITX case market. That said, I remain disappointed in the lack of diversity of FM2 ITX boards, and I hope that motherboard manufacturers address this sooner than later, as AMD's Trinity APUs lend themselves particularly well to SFF systems.
Intel's side of the equation is served reasonably well in the budget market with Sandy Bride based Celeron chips, but we're still waiting for Ivy Bridge based Celeron offerings. The trade off with Intel right now remains one of generally better CPU performance with worse graphics performance - substantially worse when we're looking at Celeron G540 vs. a Trinity APU. If you don't care about graphics and have reasonably mainstream media habits, the Celeron chips are a good option, but as we see additional emphasis on heterogeneous compute that could change.
As I've alluded to throughout the guide, it's especially important to keep your eyes on prices as we approach 2013. Retailers, both locally and online, change prices frequently and sometimes by large amounts. Identifying specific components and watching their prices will help you acquire them for as little as possible. AnandTech's Hot Deals Forum is a great place to find out about great prices. Finally, you can ask questions of fellow enthusiasts, and share your expertise in AnandTech's General Hardware and SFF Forums.
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jackstar7 - Wednesday, December 5, 2012 - link
I still build the occasional Shuttle and going Open Box from Newegg makes them often an excellent deal. Given that power needs have dropped significantly over the years, a Shuttle can stay cool and quiet these days and deliver a very solid experience.While folks might want to have their hands in all of the parts of a build, there's still value in what Shuttle brings to the desk. My most recent build included a 3770S and serves its owner very well so far. I also have a very minimalist Shuttle running with a 2400S for my HTPC and it runs more quietly than my PS3.
marvdmartian - Wednesday, December 5, 2012 - link
Hopefully their power supply problems have been solved by now? Last time I bought a Shuttle SFF system (~5 years ago), it ran fine for the first 2 years, then fried a power supply, which eventually led to a fried motherboard (lasted ~2 weeks, then died). Being a micro-BTX system, it was easier (and cheaper) to simply replace it with a standard micro-ATX case & motherboard.jackstar7 - Wednesday, December 5, 2012 - link
They started using rated 80+ PSUs that have shown me no trouble at all. Even the ones from a few years back rarely gave me any trouble at all and I was packing the things with high-power GPUs and OC-ing my CPU.I use a full tower for myself these days, but I still keep an eye on Shuttle because there are times when it's just a plain good deal.
roland12321 - Thursday, December 6, 2012 - link
I can't believe he's hammering at Shuttle there... I bought a Shuttle back in 2004 and only stopped working last year, because I accidentally damaged the motherboard because I had to replace its bios battery. Even that system was an AMD (single core, though), also using an 80mm fan and it worked fine. The only things I replaced over the years was a hard disk and a video card. Mind you, the power supply of the old Shuttle was only 250W. Maybe people were overloading their power supply without realising it, causing it to pop.As a matter of fact, because it ran so well, earlier this year I bought a new Shuttle SH67H3 and it still runs like a dream! I can't overclock my CPU (which is logical) but I have zero complaints. My next PC will also definitely be a Shuttle! It's powering the i5-2500 with a HD 7850 without any issues at all.
Also, Shuttle make their own motherboards, and are WAAYYYY ahead of any other competitor on the small form factor field. Have a look at their website, all their products are quite impressive. And I agree with jackstar7, Shuttle PCs don't make any noise. I accidentally turned it off once because I didn't hear it being on. Maybe the reviewer was running his fans at 100%?
Imo Shuttle deserves more respect...
max347 - Wednesday, December 5, 2012 - link
I think page 2 should read 4TB instead of 4GB (last paragraph)sligett - Wednesday, December 5, 2012 - link
"the plural of anecdote is not data."Well said.
Mumrik - Wednesday, December 5, 2012 - link
Best sentence in the entire article.tjcinnamon - Wednesday, December 5, 2012 - link
I have a Synology NAS and one thing I like is that it sleeps until it's hit with a request for data. Can a fileserver be set to sleep after a set amount of activity but then awake on data request (not WOL because it's a data request).Thanks,
JOe K.
bobbozzo - Friday, December 7, 2012 - link
Probably not, but you can tell the OS to put the disks to sleep after a inactivity timeout.Guspaz - Wednesday, December 5, 2012 - link
In my Shuttle SZ77R5, I've got an i7-3770k, a GeForce GTX 670, 16GB of RAM, two SSDs (with room for a third in mSATA format), and a BluRay burner. There is also room for an mPCIe wifi adapter if I should feel so inclined. Alternatively, I could have gone with one mSATA SSD and two 3.5" HDDs for bulk storage, but I have a big file server and so don't need bulk storage in my desktop.It's hard to imagine what else you might need in a typical gaming PC. I guess there could be people who have need of more than one optical drive, or more than three hard disks, or some monster dual GPU graphics card, but those people would be few and far between.
There is one critical flaw in the system, though. The BIOS (even the latest update claiming to fix the problem) can't read the temperature properly from IvyBridge CPUs, and as such, will let the thing fry before spinning up the CPU fan. Your options are either to permanently run it on jet-engine-loud mode, or to do what I did and use something like SpeedFan to do a custom fan profile.
Having to use SpeedFan isn't a problem for me, but someone less technically inclined may not be able to solve the problem like this, and would consider it a fatal flaw.